Bedugul Coffee: He injected teen blood into old people. But did it work?

By Nick Baumann and Samantha Storey

Jesse Karmazin, the 34-year-old founder of the startup Ambrosia, had a pitch journalists couldn’t resist: For a fee, he could help his clients combat aging and its related ills with infusions of blood plasma from the young. Teen donors, vampiric undertones, a serious-sounding study, an $8,000-per-person price tag and rumors that venture capitalist Peter Thiel might be interested earned Ambrosia more than 100 press mentions in just two years. Until HuffPost's Jesselyn Cook and Dana Liebelson took on the story, no one looked too hard at Karmazin's claims. That changed last week, when Cook and Liebelson published a blockbuster investigation into Ambrosia. We asked Liebelson about the piece.

How did this story come about?

Jesselyn was initially interested in speaking with a teenager who had donated blood plasma to older people for anti-aging purposes. (Despite all the media coverage about Ambrosia, no one seemed to be talking to any donors.) But we discovered there was a lot more missing information, and the story expanded!

What was the hardest part about reporting, writing or editing this piece?

While reporting this piece, we'd hit roadblocks that would hold us up for a week or so, and then something would cave, and we'd suddenly have 100 new reporting questions — ha! For example, Ambrosia's founder, Jesse Karmazin, refused to say which blood banks he worked with, citing nondisclosure agreements. That information seemed to be in the public interest, especially if young donors weren't fully aware that their plasma was going to Ambrosia. We eventually got a tip that one of the banks was in Texas, and that allowed us to nail down the specific partner. The bank stopped selling young plasma after we reached out, but they didn't tell us that directly — we found out through another source.

I was surprised how difficult it was to get public information on why a doctor like Karmazin was barred from practicing medicine by authorities in Massachusetts. Sorting through conflicting information on the safety of plasma transfusions was also a little challenging — though they are a well-known procedure, some physicians seemed quite worried about the idea of doing them for a medically unnecessary purpose. And finally, we found out Ambrosia's COO and president quietly left right before we were planning to run, so it was an adventure working on the piece right up until publication.

What do you want to learn more about that wasn't in the story or that you couldn't nail down?

There's quite a bit! We don't know what additional blood banks Ambrosia is working with, and we'd still be interested in speaking to young donors (we did speak to some, but they decided not to go on the record). We don't know why Karmazin was barred from practicing medicine in Massachusetts, whether patients really felt all the benefits Karmazin claimed, or when the last plasma transfusion was of the patient who died after going into cardiac arrest. (That information is protected by medical privacy laws.) The wider world of anti-aging startups — and regulations — seems quite interesting to me, and I would love to learn more. Also, Thiel: You've really never tried young plasma?

(Tips: dana.liebelson@huffpost.com and jesselyn.cook@huffpost.com)

This story is, in part, about a media failure. How can the press do better covering startups?

Ambrosia is sort of an innately sexy media story (Silicon Valley! Vampires! Teenagers!) but I was honestly surprised how many basic questions went unanswered in most of the coverage, stuff like: Why isn't there data? Who are the donors? Where is the blood coming from? What do the patients say? (Ultimately, we discovered the only patient who appears to have spoken publicly to the press had died.) I'm not a tech reporter, so I don't know if I have advice, but as someone who has done a lot of prison coverage, I wouldn't run a story that says: "Prison warden claims inmates love prison" without getting some data and talking to an inmate.

What do you want readers to take away?

I love fun stories and miracle health cures as much as the next reader — I have crystals on my desk and turmeric in my smoothie — but at the end of the day, remember that everyone is trying to sell you something, and it's good to ask for the science.

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